Patients suffering injury or deterioration of an intervertebral disc often require surgical intervention, which in some cases results in removal of the natural intervertebral disc and fusing of the adjacent superior and inferior vertebral bodies. In order to allow fusion with normal lordosis of the spine, however, it is necessary to mechanically stabilize the adjacent superior and inferior vertebral bodies in a desired relationship one to the other and, thereafter, to maintain the effected spatial relationship. As a consequence, medical technologists have developed a wide array of medical devices to this end. Unfortunately, the known devices are generally subject to inadvertent displacement during or following the fusion process due to ambulation of the patient and therefore generally require fairly invasive interventions to secure the devices in position in the intervertebral disc space. In particular, the known devices generally require the use of pedicle plates and pedicle screws or the like for maintenance of stable placement.
It is therefore an overriding object of the present invention to improve over the prior art by providing an expandable lordosis stabilizing cage that is inherently stable upon insertion into the intervertebral disc space of a patient under treatment. Additionally, it is an object of the present invention to provide such an expandable lordosis stabilizing cage that may be inserted into the patient's intervertebral disc space through either anterior or posterior surgical intervention.